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November 22, 2024
 

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Giovanni Fazio

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Giovanni Fazio
Giovanni Fazio has been The Japan Times' resident film crank since 1993. When not at the movies, he is busy recording and playing live with his band Makyo and running the independent electronica label Dakini Records.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 24, 2009
'The Baader Mienhof Complex'
Crowds of people take to the street to protest a dictatorship. Despite gathering peacefully, they are set upon by the police and gangs of thugs, who beat them mercilessly. A student, never having attended a demonstration before, is shot and left for dead by the cops. Official media falsely blames the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 17, 2009
'Miracle at St. Anna'
Spike Lee has made so many didactic movies in his career that it wouldn't have surprised me if his latest — "Miracle at St. Anna," which looks at a squad of black G.I.s fighting the Nazis in World War II — was yet another. What did surprise me, though, was that this time around Spike decided to mix...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 10, 2009
'Wallace & Gromit in 'A Matter of Loaf and Death''/'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'
It's summertime, and the livin' is easy; cicadas are chirping and skirts are riding high. And we all know what that means for the cinema: a wave of sequels and franchise movies to last us until there's a chill in the air once again. The "Transformers" sequel is already out there, proving that the fanboy...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 3, 2009
'Monsters vs. Aliens'
The ultimate tribute to cheesy 1950s science fiction — with its flying saucers, ray-guns and little green men — already exists and it's called "Mars Attacks." Tim Burton's homage to a duff genre was so wonderfully over-the-top, it's pretty hard to imagine anyone topping it, but Dreamworks Animation...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 26, 2009
'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'
Director Woody Allen was interviewed on the radio program Fresh Air (American National Public Radio) the other day, and repeatedly insisted that, whatever his fans may think, the characters in his films bear no resemblance whatsoever to the real him. His own marriage to a woman 34 years his junior, or...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 19, 2009
He's mad, he's an animal, and he's cool
Philippe Petit, just shy of his 60th birthday, still has a twinkle in his eye, still trains three hours a day, and — remarkably — is still wire-walking. Unlike every other interviewer who's met Petit, I did not ask him if he was scared when he did the WTC walk, on the assumption that a scared person...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 19, 2009
'Man on Wire'
The hallic urge to build towers — from the mysterious "round towers" of ancient Ireland through the Crusaders' Krak des Chevaliers and hypercapitalist monuments like the Shanghai World Financial Center — as concrete symbols of power and virility, has been equalled only by the opposite, castrating...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2009
'Terminator Salvation'/'Almaz Black Box'
"Terminator Salvation," the fourth installment in the sci-fi franchise that began way back in 1984, has just about everything you'd expect from a "Terminator" film: gleaming metal robot exoskeletons that implacably pursue their human prey, human-looking robots sent to infiltrate mankind's domain. . ....
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jun 7, 2009
Director Tran talks of moving from violence to Murakami's famed 'Norwegian Wood'
Born in Vietnam and raised in France from age 12, Tran Anh Hung made an indelible debut as a filmmaker in 1993 with "The Scent Of Green Papaya." A delicate, sensual film, where the patter of rain on garden leaves or the rustle of wind on mosquito netting was as prominent as its story of a servant girl...
CULTURE / Film
Jun 5, 2009
'The Wrestler'
Darren Aronofsky, with three out-there arthouse films to his credit, hardly seemed the ideal candidate to helm a grittily realistic movie on that most lumpen of sports, pro wrestling. But there you have it: Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" tackles an aging pro wrestler — played by 1980s star Mickey Rourke,...
CULTURE / Film
Jun 5, 2009
Getting a grip on Aronofsky
Darren Aronofsky burst onto the scene in 1998 with "Pi," the most bizarrely original debut since David Lynch's "Eraserhead," and a film he self-funded by hitting up an extended circle of family and friends for small donations. He confirmed his talent with "Requiem For A Dream," a visually inventive...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 29, 2009
'Chandni Chowk to China'
Indian filmmakers have apparently been learning much from Hollywood's hits: They've picked up on the use of digitally-generated FX, they're learning to work crossmarket platforms, and they've also mastered the art of making comic-book plots so stupefying they could serve as large-animal tranquilizers....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 22, 2009
'The Soloist'
"The Soloist" is a film that easily could have sucked, so it's almost shocking how good it actually turned out to be. I mean, just take the premise: calloused, professional journalist, used to filing his "human interest" stories and moving on, meets a funky, fuzzy-brained homeless dude who's also a musical...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 15, 2009
'State of Play'
There's a scene in "State of Play" where an unkempt, hard-nosed veteran reporter (Russell Crowe) — you know, the type who drink their whiskey straight, out of a paper cup — meets his new colleague, a younger, perkier journalist (Rachel McAdams) who bangs out gossipy blogs for their newspaper's digital...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 8, 2009
'W.'
Some things don't require a lot of explanation. If I were to tell you I was planning a barbecue in my kitchen, filled my sink with kerosene and reached for a lighter, you wouldn't need to stick around to guess what happens.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 8, 2009
Pop impresario turns Arab dance belly up
There surely aren't too many people out there who can talk about hanging out with The Sex Pistols in one breath and taking calls from then-United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the next. Miles Copeland, however, is one such person.
CULTURE / Film
May 1, 2009
'Burn After Reading'
"I know what you represent," sneers John Malkovich, playing an ex- CIA operative confronting one of his blackmailing tormentors in the Coen Brothers' latest, "Burn After Reading" — "you represent the entire idiocy of today!"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 24, 2009
'Gran Torino'
You can take Clint Eastwood out of the "Dirty Harry" movies, but you can't take Dirty Harry out of ol' Clint. So it would seem upon viewing "Gran Torino," an Eastwood-directed film in which the 79-year-old plays a tough retiree who goes vigilante to take on gangbangers terrorizing his neighborhood.
CULTURE / Film
Apr 24, 2009
'Gran Torino'
You can take Clint Eastwood out of the "Dirty Harry" movies, but you can't take Dirty Harry out of ol' Clint. So it would seem upon viewing "Gran Torino," an Eastwood-directed film in which the 79-year-old plays a tough retiree who goes vigilante to take on gangbangers terrorizing his neighborhood.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 17, 2009
'Milk'
Director Gus Van Sant's recent forays into European-inflected art-minimalism have met with much critical acclaim, but there's something about those films that still bugs me. With movies like "Elephant," about the Columbine High massacre, or "Last Days," exploring the death of Nirvana singer/guitarist...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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